b1-66er: "Three countries are due to reach Mars in the next two weeks"
Special K: Good deal.
b1-67er: So there are four possible wins:us lander, china orbiter, china lander, UAE orbiter. How many wins do you think there will be?
66: That's a good question.
And part of it will depend on the definition of a "win"...
...e.g. Mr. Musk thinks blowing his rockets to smithereens on landing is a "success"...
... There's an added complication in that both espionage and falsified data are possible here...
But I'll go with 2...
... The US and 1 of the Chinese.
Which, I guess, means you can color the UAE entry as "doomed" in my eyes.
67: Win is orbiter operating for thirty days. Rover has to land (not space x style) and drive for one day.
D4rw1n: I say any confirmed landing is a win because it means the lander was not destroyed on impact. I've got a rooting interest in the US lander, because i'm always rooting for USA. And my client made a lot of the components. But I'm guessing one in four wins.
67: US has pretty good ability to do imagery of Mars surface. Fraud here would be detected I think.
66: Land not SpaceX style, is a laugh out loud funny expression.
D4: I wonder if the Chinese could ever get away with falsifying data. You'd think they'd be motivated to, but I'm not aware of any evidence they've done it before with regard to space exploration
67: I was going to go with 3. Most likely fail is UAE orbiter with Chinese rover not far behind.
D4: I laughed at "space X style" too
This is great. We have votes for one, two, and three. But we have different definitions of a win
Oddly my definition is easiest, but my prediction is lowest
67: US lander has good chances although I think the lowering on cables concept is cockamamie.
D4: Although I guess my definition doesn't work, because the UAE orbiter never has to land
That cable thing looks really awkward
But, to be fair, no more awkward than the bouncing balloon ball we had a few years ago
67: Oh no way. The bouncing ball is a great design. Pretty failsafe.
66: My favorite of all these kinds of extraterrestrial motions was the jumping Japanese shoebox.
(On an asteroid!)
67: Also a great, great design. I wouldn't have come up with it. Brutally simple. Not external moving parts. Awesome.
